“I did, but who’s Belle?”
“You are.” You look away briefly, almost boyish. “It’s the name I gave you the night we met. You were the belle of the ball that night. As I suspect you are on any night, in whatever room you happen to find yourself. At any rate, it’s how I’ve been thinking of you ever since.”
Your words make my cheeks go hot. “You’ve been thinking about me?”
“Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you.”
“We’re strangers,” I remind you, my voice alarmingly breathless. “You have no idea what suits me.”
“I’d like to fix that.”
I toss my head with a nervous laugh. “Well then, if I’m to be Belle, what shall I call you? Hemingway, perhaps? Or Hemi?”
“I don’t care. As long as you call me.”
I look away. You’re flirting with me and I don’t like it. Or perhaps I like it too much. I try to step away but your hand grazes my arm, the barest of touches.
“Don’t go. Please.”
“Why are you here?” I ask bluntly. “What is it you want?”
“I told you—to talk. Presumably, we would have talked while riding. We’ll just do it without the horses.”
You wander back toward the open stable doors and locate a pair of battered stools, then drag them to the doorway. I watch, exasperated, as you hang your hat on a nearby nail, plant yourself on one of the stools, and wait—another man used to getting his way. Against my better judgment, I join you.
The rain is falling harder now, and it’s as if a thick gray curtain has been drawn around us. It’s just us and the thrum of rain on the roof. My senses are suddenly heightened, every nerve at attention.
You smile, attempting to disarm me. “What should we talk about?”
I pluck an imaginary bit of lint from my sleeve and flick it away. “You called the meeting. You get the first question.”
“Very well. Tell me about growing up.”
I blink at you, puzzled. “Growing up?”
“I want to know it all. Did you wear your hair in braids? Who was your first boyfriend? Did you like school?”
“No to the braids,” I reply, though I have no idea why you’d care about such a thing. “I don’t remember my first boyfriend’s name. And I hated school. No, that’s not true. I didn’t hate all of it. I hated the girls I went to school with. And the headmistress, Mrs. Cavanaugh, who didn’t like me because I asked too many questions and doodled during class.”
“Doodled?”
“In my composition book.”
“Your boyfriend’s name?”
“Poems,” I say simply.
“You write poetry?”
I see I’ve surprised you. I’ve surprised myself too. I haven’t thought of those silly poems in years, and I wonder why they’ve suddenly sprung to mind. “I was a girl. It’s what girls do. Write silly poems about our angst.”
“Love poems?”
I toss my head with a little laugh, dimly aware that the gesture might be mistaken for a flirtation. “What did I know about love? I was a child. No. I wrote nonsense. Rubbish about a caged bird who dreamed of leaving her bars behind, of soaring high above the city and flying far, far away. And there was one about being lost in one of those hedge mazes. The hedges kept growing taller and taller and I couldn’t find my way out.”
“Sounds deep.”
“It was tosh, as they say on your side of the pond. But I was a fanatic about poetry back then. I read everything I could get my hands on, some of it unacceptable for a girl my age. I was convinced I was going to be Elizabeth Barrett Browning when I grew up.”
You study me strangely, as if searching for something. “When were you going to tell me this?”
The question feels odd, the kind of thing you ask someone you’ve known for years. “Tell you how? When? We’ve only just met.”
Your mouth curls in a way that’s vaguely sensual. “I keep forgetting.”
I don’t know how you’ve managed it, but you seem to be sitting closer now, as if the world has suddenly shrunk to just this doorway, to just you and me and our words, mingling with the falling rain. And yet, when I blink, I see that your stool is exactly where you first placed it. I drop my eyes, stare at my boots.
“The night we met,” you say, then add, “at the St. Regis”—as if I need reminding—“we talked about books, about Hemingway and Dickens and the Bront?s, and you never once let on that you wrote.”
“Because I don’t.” My tone is too emphatic, too defensive. I soften it. “It was just one of those childish fantasies you grow out of. You know how it is. You’re suddenly passionate about something, so passionate that for a while it consumes you; then something happens and it’s over.”
“What happened?”
I squirm a little, uncomfortable with the memory. But you’re watching me so carefully, so completely. “Mrs. Cavanaugh,” I answer finally. “She confiscated one of my notebooks and showed it to my father. It was . . . I was in my Sappho phase at the time. The blushing apple, ungotten, ungathered. I had no idea what any of it meant, and I didn’t care. It was about the words, the rhythm of them, the ache they conveyed. I longed to re-create them somehow, in my own words, so I began experimenting, trying to emulate that beautiful lyricism. My father was appalled by what I’d written. Smut, he called it. He made me hand over all my notebooks, then made me watch as he ripped out the pages and tore them to shreds. I was forbidden to even read poetry. For a while, I kept a journal under my bed and continued to scribble, but my sister found it and squealed. That was the end of my poetry career.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. Fifteen, maybe.”
“And you haven’t written since?”
“No.”
“But you could. Now, I mean.”
I shrug, shift my eyes from yours. “There’s no point.”
“Beyond having something to say, you mean?”
“But I don’t.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m not like you,” I say flatly, because you might as well know it now, before this strange unraveling of my inner self goes too far. “I have no depth. No . . . substance, I guess you’d call it. Unless you count a trust fund as substance. I’m not the sort to sail around the world and chase dreams or thumb my nose at convention like your friend Goldie. I thought I was once, but I was quickly disabused of the notion. I’m exactly what you thought me when you asked me about the horses—the spoiled daughter of a very rich man who’s used to getting everything she wants.”
“And the price of everything is obedience?”
I hold your gaze, braving those eyes that seem to see through me. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t. We all make our choices. Business. Politics. Marriage to someone we’ll never be happy with. It’s called compromise.”
“Is that what you’re doing with Goldie?” I say, wanting desperately to turn the tables. “Compromising?”
You sigh. “Goldie again. All right. What do you want to know?”
“Are the two of you . . .”
“Lovers?” you supply. “No need to be shy. I’m happy to share all the juicy details, only brace yourself. It’s rather lurid.”